
A year ago, for Beltaine/May Day over at church, I baked some cookies using ingredients suggested on a few websites, and to do so I found a recipe at home that I tweaked a little bit, and they went over well, so I decided to do it again this year. I didn't post it before now because I wanted to tweak it some more first. So this is finally what I came up with.
Beltaine Oatmeal Cookies
1 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup (2 sticks) butter
3/4 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1 Tbsp honey
3 cups oats
1/2 to 1 cup dried cherries
Combine flour, baking soda, nutmeg, salt. Beat together butter, sugars, eggs, vanilla, honey. Gradually add flour mixture, mix. Stir in oats and cherries.
Bake at 375 degrees F for 7-8 min. for chewy [read soft] or 9-10 min. for crisp [actually, just chewy enough and almost crisp]. That's for drop cookies.
Or make into bar cookies in a 15"x10" pan for 18-22 min.
Last year I used less nutmeg, I was just guessing at the honey, and we turned out not to have any dried cherries at the time (we never run out of dried fruit!) so I made the cookies without, and pressed candied cherries into the top while they were still hot and soft enough. But they're better this way.
I made these this year with a half cup cherries; hubby thinks it would be better with a full cup. To each his taste.
